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Peter Agre
born 1949 · United States · Contemporary
Nobel Chemistry 2003
American physician-scientist at Johns Hopkins; discovered the water-channel proteins aquaporins.
Nobel Prize work
Agre isolated the first aquaporin, a membrane protein that forms channels letting water molecules pass rapidly in and out of cells while excluding ions. The discovery, rewarded by the 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, explained a fundamental question of cell biology — how water crosses membranes — and opened a family of water-channel proteins.